When Old Men Die

by Bill Crider

  "Good morning, Mr. Smith," Patrick said in his wheezy voice. "It's a wonderful day for a funeral."

  "I'm not so sure any day is a good day for that," I said.

  Lytle raised his arms as if to embrace the day. His wide smile showed yellowing teeth.

  "I haven't been outside in years," he said. "But this" -- he looked toward the tomb -- "this makes me wonder what I've been missing."

  "Life," I said. "That's all."

  "And death," Lytle said. "You must know, Mr. Smith, that there's nothing quite so satisfying as the death of an old enemy. I've waited years for this day."

  "He's been dead for a while," I pointed out.

  "Yes, but now he is finally and irrevocably entombed." Lytle was positively beaming. "I must say I find it quite gratifying."

  "I'm glad you're so happy."

  "Oh, I'm not happy about everything," he said. "I'm actually very disappointed in you, for example. I left you a number of messages."

  "I got in late last night," I said. "I was planning to give you a call today."

  "I'm sure you were. But what were you going to tell me? Have you made any progress in finding Mr. Mercer?"

  I wondered if Harry had ever been called Mr. Mercer in his life. Most likely he hadn't, and certainly not by the likes of Patrick Lytle.

  "I haven't found him," I said.

  "Really, I'm most disappointed," Lytle said. "I do want to help him, and I can't do that unless you bring him to me."

  "I'll see what I can do," I told him. "Now I have a question for you."

  "I'll be glad to tell you anything that might help, but I'm afraid I know nothing. I have very little contact with people on the Island, and I never leave my home."

  "So you keep telling me. What I'd like to know is how you found out I was looking for Harry."

  Lytle's old eyes hooded themselves and he looked down at the blanket that covered his legs. His liver-spotted hands lay in his lap, and he turned them over slowly.

  "I don't believe that's any of your business," he said after a second or two.

  "It is, though. It might help me find him."

  Lytle gave it some thought. "Very well. If you must know, it was your employer who told me. Wally Zintner."

  Now that was interesting. If I could believe it.

  "There," Lytle said. "I've told you. Is it going to help you?"

  "I'll let you know," I said.

  Lytle grunted. "I hope that you will. I dislike having to leave messages on those infernal machines." He gave me a hard stare. "Take me to the van, Paul."

  Throughout my entire conversation with his grandfather, Paul Lytle had stood behind the chair, his hands resting calmly on the handles. He had appeared to be completely uninterested in our conversation, hardly even glancing at me or his grandfather. But he was listening, all right. He tipped the chair backward, turned it, and wheeled Patrick Lytle toward a maroon Chevy Astro van parked a little way from the tomb.

  I watched them go, hoping to see Cathy Macklin, but she was no longer there.

  Twenty-Five

  I was feeling much better than I had after leaving the hospital. My head wasn't throbbing, and my ear wasn't swollen. I'd slept pretty well, too, and that had helped. It was also, as Lytle had said, a wonderful day. A front had passed through, and the humidity was probably somewhere around forty percent. It doesn't get that low on the Island very often.

  The only disturbing element of the day, with the exception of the fact that I hadn't found Harry yet, was that Barnes was going to know very soon that I'd been firing my pistol in the cotton warehouse where Ro-Jo's body had been found. He already had the ballistics records from the time I'd looked for Dino's daughter; all he had to do was get a match with the slugs from the warehouse, which he certainly would.

  I had two courses of action. I could tell the truth, or I could lie.

  Of the two, the latter was by far the most attractive.

  I could claim that my pistol had been stolen in a break-in at the house where I was living. Barnes would, of course, ask why the burglary hadn't been reported, and I would say that I hadn't wanted to bother the police, who, I was sure, had more pressing things to investigate.

  I could almost hear his reaction to that now. It wasn't going to be pleasant, and the lie probably wasn't going to keep me out of jail.

  So in spite of my strong inclination to the contrary, it seemed that I was going to have to tell the truth.

  How embarrassing.

  There was another option, which involved finding Harry and solving Ro-Jo's murder, thereby giving Barnes the whole case wrapped up in a nice little package.

  If I could do that, he might go easy on me about the pistol. Besides, if he didn't find it in my possession, there was no way he could prove that I was the one who'd fired it.

  The problem with that whole idea was that I didn't seem to be one step closer to finding Harry than I'd been the afternoon that Dino found me on the pier.

  I told myself that if I'd been better at my job, Ro-Jo would still be alive.

  Then I told myself to shut up. I couldn't go on blaming myself for everything that happened, not even for what had happened to Jan. Some things happened in spite of what I could do, not because of what I had done. There was no way that Ro-Jo's death could have been my fault.

  I was so convincing that I almost believed myself.

  "Flounder," Jody said when I walked in the bait shop. "That's what you want to go for." He was talking too fast. "They be hittin' on a day like this, even if it is January. You go wadin' --"

  I held up a hand to stop him. "I don't want to go fishing, Jody. You know what happened to Ro-Jo?"

  He looked around the dimly-lit shop. There was no one there but me and him. Outside the door, the sun fell warm and bright on the tiny parking lot.

  "I heard 'bout it. I wish I hadn', though. I wish I hadn' called you, neither. I be sure enough sorry 'bout doin' that."

  "I didn't kill Ro-Jo," I said. "You don't think I'd be here if I'd killed anyone, do you?"

  "Hard to tell," Jody said. "Maybe you here to kill me now."

  "You know better than that. What would I kill you with?"

  "Folks say whoever killed Ro-Jo done it with his bare hands. Maybe you do it that way."

  "You're bigger than I am," I said.

  "That don't mean nothin'. Maybe you know that kung-fu kind of fightin'."

  "I don't know kung-fu, and I didn't kill Ro-Jo. I'm not going to kill you, either."

  He looked as if he still didn't quite believe me and as if he would be really happy if some other customer would walk through the door so that he wouldn't be alone with me in the little shop.

  "Look, Jody," I said, "this is all about Harry. He saw something he wasn't meant to see, and now someone's hunting him. Has anybody been in here asking about him?"

  "Nobody 'cept you."

  "I have to find him. I'm afraid that if I don't, he might wind up like Ro-Jo. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

  "Harry never hurt nobody."

  "That doesn't help much," I said. "Whoever killed Ro-Jo was trying to beat information out of him. Maybe Ro-Jo told something before he died, if he knew anything to tell. If he did, Harry is in danger."

  I was pretty sure I would have told whatever I knew if someone were beating me the way Ro-Jo had been beaten. Ro-Jo might have held out, and he might not even have known where Harry was hiding, but I couldn't count on that.

  "I'd help Harry if I could," Jody said. "But I don't know where he's at. I'd help him if I could."

  He was still acting skittish, as if I were a threat to him. I'd always thought of myself as a relatively harmless-looking guy. I wondered if I'd sprouted horns and a forked tail since I'd last checked the mirror.

  "I believe you," I said. "But maybe someone else knows. Is there anyone you can think of who might have an idea where Harry is? It doesn't even have to be a good idea. Any old idea at all would help."

  Jody's eyes slid away from me, and I was
instantly certain that he did know something that he wasn't telling.

  "Jody," I said. "You've got to help me find Harry before someone else does. I'm not going to hurt him. You'd know that if you thought about it."

  He turned back to me. "OK," he said. "There might be somebody who could help you."

  Galveston has a number of mixed neighborhoods, but a lot of the black population lives just off Broadway in housing projects that are just as depressing to look at as any similar project anywhere in the country -- drab brick apartments with clothes hanging on lines strung in the sterile yards. Now and then there's some evidence of a happier kind of existence, a bright plastic scooter or doll house that show their scuffs and dirt only when you get close to them.

  There are usually people standing in streets near the projects, talking or resting against the cars. Youth gangs are a problem in Galveston, and some of the young men you see in the neighborhood have beepers on their belts. Even some of the kids have them.

  In the blocks near the projects there are houses and bars in varying degrees of repair. I was looking for a house not far from the cemetery and just a block from the railroad yards. There weren't a lot of white faces around. In fact, except for mine there weren't any. I felt a little conspicuous sitting in the uncovered Jeep.

  I stopped in front of the house. Sometime within the last year or so it had been about half painted a light blue, but for some reason the job had never been completed. The rest of the house was a weathered gray. There were rusted screens on the windows, but the yard looked good. No dark green winter weeds sprouted in it. Someone had taken care of the yard.

  I could feel the eyes on me when I got out of the Jeep, and the only comforting thought I could muster was that if Alex Minor was following me, he was going to have a lot more trouble getting to the house than I was. I was the wrong color, but at least I looked as if I belonged on the Island. Minor looked more like he belonged in Houston, and on the Island, that's not a compliment.

  I climbed the cement steps and knocked on the screen door. It rattled in its frame.

  I stood there for what seemed like a very long time. It was as if everything on the street had frozen in position. I looked around the neighborhood, but no eyes met mine.

  Finally someone came to the door and pushed it open. I had to step down to get out of the way, and I found my eyes on a level with those of a very old woman. She might have been as old as Sally West. She might have been older.

  She was very short and very thin, and her mouth was sunken as if she didn't have a tooth in her head. Her hair was white and pulled close to her head. She looked at me as if waiting for me to say something.

  So I did. "Mrs. Williams?"

  "Tha's me," she said. "Who're you?"

  "Truman Smith. Did Jody phone you?"

  "He phone me, say you comin'. Didn' say what you want, though. You gonna tell me that?"

  I was getting more and more uncomfortable standing there with eight or ten people watching me and pretending not to.

  "Could I come inside and tell you?" I asked.

  "I don' know you. Don' know a thing about you. I'm jus' a he'pless ole woman. You ain' gonna come in my house to talk, no sir."

  "All right," I said. I didn't want to argue. Someone might decide that Mrs. Williams needed protecting and come over. "We can talk here. It's about Harry. Harry Mercer."

  She looked at me for a long time. Then she looked over my head and sort of nodded. The neighborhood unfroze. I could see movement out of the corner of my eyes, and I could hear voices.

  "Maybe you better come in after all," Mrs. Williams said.

  The little sitting room was as neat as the yard. There were even doilies on the end tables. There was a smoky smell in the air, but it wasn't the smell of cigarettes; it was a little like the smell of a fireplace or wood-burning stove, though I had seen neither in the house as I walked to the sitting room.

  Mrs. Williams took a seat in a straight-backed wooden rocker that Sally West might have admired. I sat in a ladder-backed chair with a straw bottom.

  "What you askin' 'bout Harry for?" Mrs. Williams wanted to know when we were seated.

  I told her about Dino. Like everyone else on the Island, she'd heard of him, and also like nearly everyone else, she'd never seen him.

  "Why he want to find Harry?" she asked.

  "Harry's his friend. Dino likes things that remind him of the old days, and Harry has been around longer than anybody."

  "Huh. Not no longer than me."

  "Maybe not. But Dino thinks something may have happened to Harry, so he asked me to find him."

  "Ain' nothin' happen to Harry."

  "Do you know where he is?"

  "Nosir, I don' know. Where Harry is, tha's his business."

  "Jody said you were Harry's friend."

  "I guess you could say that. I been knowin' Harry Mercer since we was kids. But that don' mean he tell me ever'thing he knows."

  "I'm worried about him," I said. "I'm afraid someone's going to hurt him if I don't find him first."

  "If you can't find him, how you think anybody else gonna do it?"

  "They might get lucky," I said.

  "They might not, though. I know Harry is off the streets. I heard 'bout that. But I don' know why, and it ain' none of my business, no more'n it's yours. Why don' you jus' leave Harry alone?"

  I told her again that I was afraid of what might happen and asked her if she'd heard about Ro-Jo.

  "I heard. I hear a lot of things. You think the man got Ro-Jo's after Harry?"

  "I'm pretty sure of it."

  "Well, we jus' have to hope that he don' get lucky, 'cause I ain' able to he'p you."

  "One other thing," I said. "Did Harry ever have a sister?"

  That got a smile, and I could see that I was right about her teeth. She didn't have any.

  "Harry had a brother," she said. "Fine lookin' boy, he was. I remember him very well." She stopped smiling. "But he died right after the war. Harry never had no sister. Why you want to know that?"

  I told her about Alex Minor.

  "He sound like a bad man," she said.

  "He is," I agreed. "And he's looking for Harry."

  "He the one got Ro-Jo?"

  "I don't know. He might be."

  "Even if he is, don' matter. I still can't he'p you."

  She leaned back in her chair and started to rock. I knew that the discussion was over, so I got up to leave.

  "Mr. Smith?" she said as I started out of the room.

  I turned around.

  "If I fin' out anything, I get in touch with Jody. I don' want Harry to get hurt."

  I'd hoped for more, but I'd settle for what I could get. I thanked her and went outside. There were still people in the street and in the yards, but no one watched me as I got in the Jeep and drove away.

  Twenty-Six

  I told Dino that it was much too early for lunch, but he insisted on fixing chicken pot pies, which he heated in a convection oven he'd ordered by calling an 800-number after watching an infomercial on cable.

  "This thing is great," he said as the fan in the top of the oven whirred away. "Cooks a lot faster than a conventional oven, and it warms the pies all the way through. You don't have to take them out of the little aluminum pans, either. You oughta get you one, Tru."

  "I hope you're not going to start watching those infomercials instead of the talk shows."

  He didn't exactly blush, but he had the grace to look a little ashamed.

  "They just come on late at night and on Sundays," he said. "You can get some neat stuff."

  "Right. Like hair paint for your bald spot."

  "OK, maybe everything's not so great, but what about that Flowbee?"

  I told him that I didn't know what a Flowbee was.

  "It's a machine to cut hair. You hook it up to your vacuum cleaner."

  I held up a hand. "I don't want to hear this," I said.

  He would have told me anyway, but a there was a little din
g from the oven that meant the chicken pot pies were ready. He set them in a couple of plates he'd already placed on the table and we sat down to eat.

  The pies were hot, all right, but there was one drawback. They tasted like chicken pot pies. I was sorry I hadn't insisted that we go out. Even worse, Dino had run out of Big Red for me to wash the pie down with.

  "You'll have to bring a couple in the next time you come," he said.

  I told him not to worry, that I'd be sure to do it. He tried to talk me into drinking a glass of Diet Coke, but I wouldn't go for it. I drank water instead.

  When we'd eaten, Dino wanted to go to his living room and watch The People's Court. I told him that we needed to talk. He sighed, but we stayed in the kitchen.

  After I'd finished telling him everything that had happened, he said, "You could have called me from the hospital. I'd have come after you."

  He probably even meant it, though I don't think he would actually have done it. He might have gotten Evelyn to do it, however.

  "It doesn't matter," I said. "What matters is what we're going to do."

  "Let's go through the whole thing and see what we know for sure," he said. "Or what we think we know. Then we'll decide what we have to do next."

  He meant that we'd decide what I'd have to do next, but there was no use in telling him that. So we talked everything over and tried to sort things out.

  We knew that Harry had disappeared about the time Braddy Macklin was killed, and we thought we knew that Harry had witnessed Macklin's death and somehow escaped.

  We thought we knew that Macklin's killer was after Harry, and we were sure that Becker and Zintner were after him.

  "You believe Zintner?" Dino asked.

  "I believe he wants Harry. I'm still not sure why he wants him."

  "Zintner wouldn't go to the cops." There was approval in Dino's voice. "If Macklin was working for him, he'd want to settle the score himself."

  "You sound like you believe him."

  "I'd probably do the same thing. And Becker didn't finish you off when he had the chance."

  "Gee, that makes me like him even more than ever."

  "You don't have to like him. Just give him the benefit of the doubt."